Buchholz looking to take the next step after saving his 2012 season

Thursday

This is the third and final piece in a series of looks at pitchers who figure to be back to back in the Red Sox rotation next season.

This is the third and final piece in a series of looks at pitchers who figure to be back to back in the Red Sox rotation next season.

Clay Buchholz didn’t discover this season what it’s like to have everything fall apart and have to get it back together again.

He had done that before. He didn’t think he was going to have to do it again.

Buchholz began last season in disastrous fashion. He had no feel for his changeup, and he didn’t have a comparable weapon to compensate. Opposing teams crushed him. He had a 9.09 ERA five starts into the season. There were calls for him to be yanked from the rotation and banished to the minor leagues.

That’s what had happened, after all, when Buchholz endured a similar start in 2008. He then was an electric 23-year-old with a no-hitter already on his resume who had to be shipped to Double-A Portland to fix whatever was wrong with him.

But Buchholz now has established himself as an above-average major-league pitcher — and that means he has leeway he hadn’t gotten in 2008.

Buchholz finished the season with a 4.56 ERA in a career-high 1891/3 innings. He struck out a career-high 129 hitters and walked 64, a higher strikeout-to-walk ratio than he had during his All-Star season of 2010.

After the low watermark of his season, on May 6, the righty posted a 3.62 ERA in 23 starts, striking out 109 and walking 45.

“It’s tough starting off bad, but I’ve had that same type of adversity before and I’ve come back from it and done well,” he said a day after his last start of the season. “That was one of my foundations — knowing I could get through it. The team kept letting me go out there every fifth day and keep throwing and try to get through those situations and to find a way and string together a couple of good starts in a row.”

One of the keys was the resuscitation of his changeup in the middle of May, at which point he also added a split-fingered fastball.

“You always have to find a way to do something,” he said. “If something is not working, you have to find a way to find another pitch or work on the pitch you need that’s been a good pitch for you throughout your career. That’s sort of what I did. Slowly but surely, the changeup came back in the middle of the season and it was good for the rest of the season.”

The result was just the second season in which Buchholz pitched in the major leagues in April and September and made the vast majority of his starts in between. The only obstacle was a bout of esophagitis that landed him in the hospital in June. It was just the second season in which he’d pitched more than 150 innings.

The next step is to get to 200 innings for the first time. The season he had this year put him in position to do that next year.

“To do that, it takes going out and giving your team a chance to win 90 percent of the time, going deep into games for 28 to 30 starts, whatever it is,” he said. “I still haven’t gotten to that number, but being as close as I am right now, everything sort of has to be in sync with each other.

“You have to pitch deep into games. You can’t give up a bunch of runs. You can’t throw a whole lot of pitches in the innings that you’re out there. It’s a process. But I feel good about it. It gives me a little confidence in myself to know I can go out for a full season.”

One of the challenges of pitching a full season is the number of times a pitcher will face certain opposing teams, especially intradivision rivals. Buchholz pitched against the Tampa Bay Rays a jaw-dropping six times this past season, almost one-third of his total starts. He finished with a 3.99 ERA in six starts against Tampa Bay, a 4.50 ERA in four starts against Baltimore and a 2.66 ERA in three starts against Toronto.

One of his best starts all season occurred at Tropicana Field on Sept. 20, when he tossed seven shutout innings, yielding just four hits. That he then gave up four runs in six innings in another start against the Rays five days later showed he still has learning to do and adjustments to make.

“That’s the tough part, especially about this division and how loaded it’s gotten over the last couple of years,” he said. “Four of my last five starts, the team I pitched against, the next start was against the same team. One start was against Tampa, and my next start was against Tampa. When it lines up that way, that makes it hard because you have to figure how you’re going to attack guys and try to stay away from doing the same thing for each hitter. That’s one of the things you just have to figure out over time.”

But if Buchholz can figure out how to pitch without his changeup for half a season, he can figure out how to pitch to the same lineup over and over.

“Every start, there’s something different that goes on,” he said. “Especially if you go out and do good, it gives you confidence to do it again. If you have a bad game and you have to face that same lineup, that’s where confidence and trying to do something different comes into play. That’s one of the things I feel like I did a decent job of this year, but there’s always room for improvement.”

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.